Surviving Zonda

    In my opinion, the hype about this Zonda wind was a little 'blown' out of proportion. I did hear a lot of wind all through the night, but it wasn't worse than any wind I'd ever heard in Colorado. My family said they couldn't sleep very well with all the wind. My orientation that was scheduled for 10 the next morning got canceled, along with my classes for the afternoon. With nothing to do all day, and a little cautious to leave the house, I made good use of my netflix account in the morning. But I could only do this for so long and decided to brave the winds to meet some friends for cafe in the city. It was a little chilly out, cloudy, and no sun, but nowhere near dangerous or stormy. It wasn't even windy. It was a little dry, but not much more than normal. Mendoza is naturally a very dry place. I didn't feel any of the personality changes that Zonda apparently causes, and didn't have any cardio problems. I'm very surprised that it was such a big deal to the family and the program here.Two days after the Zonda hype, it actually rained here, which is confusing because I've been told it barely ever rains here, and I thought the Zonda was supposed to be a dry and hot wind, not rainy and cold. This has been a very strange weather phenomenon, mostly because of the anticipation.

I'm starting to get nervous

    I've been pretty calm through my whole experience abroad so far. But that's because I've really only been with friends from the program, eating helado and drinking cafecitos and cerveza, exploring the city and the parks. The last two weeks have been a vacation, but now school is about to start, and I'm starting to wish I'd practiced a little more Spanish this summer. I'm definitely behind a lot of the other students. I can have decent conversations with my family and program directors because they talk very slowly for me, but when other locals talk to me, I can barely understand and they don't even think I speak Spanish. I'm nervous for when I'll actually need to talk to other locals in my classes.
    The processes for school are different here, and it's not that they are bad, it's just that I need to make some adjustments to get out of my comfort zone. I went to two orientations today for my university, to introduce us to two of the different facultades (career paths) offered at the school. I learned how to check out books from the library; there are index cards with the information for each book available in a filing system, and you have to write down the information of the book you want and take it to a library assistant, who will give you the book for 7 days if it isn't rented out already. I also learned more about the photocopy system that the university uses. It seemed confusing to me in Spanish, but I have a feeling its easier than I'm making it seem to be. It's honestly a great idea to just use photocopies of the chapters needed from textbooks; it is cheaper and more efficient because rarely do classes use the entire textbook.
    The classes at Cuyo will be anywhere from 30 students to a couple hundred students. I got to see some classrooms, and they look nice, very similar to classrooms at home with simply chairs and desks. There isn't a lot of technology in the buildings. The professors mainly lecture or use white boards, but there are older computers available in the library. The classes generally only have one partial exam (midterm) and one final exam that is written and oral. It is very common here to study in groups, so hopefully this will be a good way to meet some local students. People don't bring computers to class here, so I will need to get good at taking notes by hand.
    I have a week of intense Spanish this week, then classes start Monday! I'm not ready for that, summer wasn't long enough!
    One last thought- it's ironic that I posted this after having learned about the Zonda wind that causes people to become stressed. I think my nerves have more to do with the fact that classes are starting than the wind, though.

Beware of Zonda wind

    I got an alert email from my program today warning me of dangerous weather in Mendoza in the upcoming days. The culprit of the dangerous weather is the Zonda wind. This is a type of dry wind that forms on the east side of the Andes. It is caused by polar air and it gets warmed as it descends the slope (Thank you Wikipedia). Apparently Zonda wind can cause personality changes. The email says that this is from the positive ionization of the air, and can make people angry or tired, more stressed, and increases people's sensitivity to cardio problems, allergies and sweating. There are supposedly more car accidents on days of Zonda wind. People here get very nervous and stay in doors to avoid accidents.  My host mom told me that there is a similar wind in Germany that causes these symptoms as well.
    I thought this was a bit of a joke when I read the email. I'm used to weather alerts when 4 feet of snow is expected, so obviously I think I can handle a bit of wind. But the mendocinos take this a lot more seriously than I was expecting. My host mom warned me about not going running or doing any tough physical exercise today. She said I should allow an extra ten minutes to walk to school because I will get tired because it's hotter out, and I should drink a lot more water. My friend here said today that her allergies were actually acting up. School can even be canceled because of it.
    I haven't felt any symptoms yet, but I need to be careful around here! 

    Update! The elementary schools in Mendoza actually canceled school tomorrow because of the approaching wind! I'm starting to think the wind is more dangerous than I thought. My host sister gave me a flashlight for tonight because the lights might go out when there is a lot of wind.
  

This is what I'm here for

  

Apart from wanting to learn Spanish, I chose Mendoza for my study abroad experience because it is next to the mountains. Mendoza is at the base of the Andes Mountains, and it only took about 20 minutes in a bus to get us to a trailhead. A group of us went to Cerro Arco, a 6,135 foot high mountain in the foothills of the Andes. The bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, and we had to walk on a dirt road for a while to get to the trail. The hike was only two kilometers, but took us up a steep trail that winded through the mountain to the top, where there are a bunch of telephone poles, but a great view of the city and some of the taller mountains in the Andes. We saw a bunch of other people hiking, running, biking, and 4-wheeling the trail. It was so beautiful being in the fresh air with no clouds in sight and we could see for miles. At the base there is a restaurant with 5 peso empenadas, so we celebrated our first mountain adventure with empenadas and cerveza. Our our way back we saw some people hang-gliding from the mountain. Maybe that will be our next adventure!

Bus Tour

  My program includes a few group excursions while I'm here, and we went on our first one today on an open air bus tour of San Martin Park. I live right next to this park, so I'd seen a little bit of it already when I run or on my way to class, but the park is very very big and this was a great way to see more of it and learn what is right in my backyard.

    There is so much more in the park than I would've known. I've looked at a map to see what there is in the park, but it was fun to see everything from the bus. The park actually starts to gain some altitude as we drove farther west into the park and up some rolling hills, which I hadn't expected. I thought the mountains were a little farther away. We drove up one hill where there is a wall with a condor imprinted in the bricks, and there were many condors flying overhead at the same time.
    We stopped at a monument to the Army of the Andes, too, which was at the top of a smaller mountain where we saw people mountain biking and many people running up the hill.

    There is also an outdoor ampitheater in the park where some events happen, probably when it is closer to summer time. I wish it was like Red Rocks where I could go run the steps, but I think it's closed off when not being used.
    From our bus we could see all of Mendoza hidden behind the mountains which was really neat. There aren't many tall buildings here because Mendoza actually experiences a lot of earthquakes and tremors, which I have yet to experience.

Champ Status

This is the second day in a row that I've gotten home from the bars at 5 am. It's only our second weekend here and it's definitely starting to feel normal to stay out this late. I'm barely even tired. In Denver, staying out til 5 is champ status, at least for me. Here, getting home at 5 means that you are the first to leave the bars, while everyone else is still there and raging on. I even felt a little guilty being the first to leave at 5. I guess it's just not normal to leave the club until the sun comes back out and all the restaurants open again for breakfast. Apparently we are supposed to go to Mr. Dog's when we are done with the boliches to get corn dogs for breakfast. I'll work my way up to that.

                                                                      Boliche pictures

Cell Phones in Argentina

    This is my new cell phone to use while here in Argentina! This is similar to the very first cell phone I ever had 9 years ago! It fits in my pocket, the battery lasts for probably 5 days, and it is much more durable than my smart phone. I've had to relearn how to text in T9, and my phone even has a game on it.
    It's really easy here to get cheap phones and pay as you go. I spent about $40 on this phone and the SIM card, and then I can pay for credit at little kiosks all around the city to prepay for minutes and messages.
    There are a few really popular service providers here. They are Claro, Movistar, and Personal. Our program bought all of our phones together to get a better price, so all of the students in my program have Personal too, and this makes it cheaper to talk to each other. I'm a little unclear about the whole system because its a lot of information to take in in Spanish, but as far as I understand, it's cheaper to text people on my same service, texts are cheaper than phone calls, and when I need to respond to a text, I should always create a new text instead of hit reply because it is cheaper this way. The credit that you put on your phone expires at the end of each month, too, so I need to guess how much I'll use.  I put 30 pesos of credit on my phone and have only needed to use it a few times so far, but hopefully this lasts me a while.
    I think it's cute that we all have matching phones in the program. I put the key chain on mine to differentiate it. I think technically I could access Facebook and other programs on this phone if I wanted to, but it would cost a ton and it's somewhat of a relief to not be using a phone all day. Since everyone in the program is with each other for a good part of the day anyway, there isn't really a need to be spending a bunch of time on our phones.